Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives

Spiritual Exercises

Ignatian Retreat

(July 1974)

The Promise of Heaven

Conference by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

It is important, even indispensable, that we reflect on the promise of heaven
that lies ahead of us. First because happiness on earth, even at its best,
is mixed with sorrow. We know that it is not fully satisfying, that it
is exceedingly fragile and is very costly in sacrifice. We are constantly
reminded by our faith and our conscience that it is highly conditional
and above all transitory, for we must all soon die.

Moreover, we need to be periodically strongly motivated
to persevere in virtue and overcome our tendency to self-indulgence, as
did the Galatians who were asked by Saint Paul, "You stupid Galatians,
who has bewitched you?" We are all creatures of desires, and we look
forward to having our desires for perfect happiness perfectly satisfied.

For the context of our reflection we shall take Saint John's Apocalypse as our
source, which is also called, from the Latin, the Book of Revelation.
It is indeed a revelation of two futures, first of all of the Church's
future from the end of the Apostolic Age when John was writing until the
end of time; then of the Church's future beyond time into eternity. There
is no more perfect synthesis of these two Churches, the meaning and relationship
of the Church militant still in struggle until the last day, and of the
Church triumphant in glory after the day of final judgment.

Throughout the Apocalypse, John sustains the two concurrent themes of conflict
on earth between the Church of Christ and the forces of evil and then
of the final victory of Christ's holy ones who overcome the world to join
Christ in celestial glory. It is especially in his last two chapters that
Johnrelates the glories of heaven. Some of his passages are among the
most powerful in revelation.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. I saw the holy
city, and the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, as beautiful
as a bride all dressed for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice call
from the throne, 'You see this city? Here God lives among men. He will
make His home among them, they shall be His people, and He will be their
God. His name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their
eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning and sadness. The
world of the past has gone.'

Then in the last chapter he writes:

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in its place
in the city; his servants will worship him, they will see him face to
face, and his name will be written on their foreheads. It will never be
night again and they will reign for ever and ever.

Out of this wealth of revelation, couched in mystery, certain features of the
joys of heaven stand out. If there is some risk in choosing a few features
while passing others by, it is worth the effort because God wants us to
be inspired by what He has in store for us, so that we will want to join
Him in the world to come.

There are two stages of heavenly happiness awaiting us. The first is after death;
we hope to be in heaven immediately or soon after death, but we
will be only in our souls, without the body. This will be for a time.
The second stage will be after the last day of the world when our bodies
will rise from the grave and we shall be in heaven in body and soul.

John's vision of heaven spans both stages, but concentrates on the second, after
the last day, meaning the last day of the universe. You see, our own last
day is really not far away. When we speak of the joys of heaven, we usually
advert to the joys that await us immediately after death. Nevertheless,
perfect happiness will come only after both elements of our nature, souls
and bodies, will have reached their destiny and reaped their respective
rewards. After all, we have been serving God not as angels, only in spirit,
but also in body.

There will be a new heaven and a new earth. As Saint John
had it revealed to him by Christ, there will be not only a final resurrection
of the body, but also a universal renovation of the world. It is expressed
in symbolic language, and as all eschatological mysteries, it beggars
description. We are permitted to expect not precisely, in fact not really,
an annihilation of this world, but its cosmic resuscitation.

So there will be a new heaven, new in some way by contrast with what heaven
is now. Heaven after the last day will be peopled not only by human spirits,
but by human risen bodies, joining the company of Christ and Mary, who
faith tells us are already in heaven in flesh and spirit. In the strictest
theological terms, we don't quite mean that there was a heaven before
anyone else but God was there. Strictly speaking, heaven began when God,
having existed from all eternity and having always been perfectly happy,
first brought the glorified spirits to join Him in a sharing in His happiness.
Heaven is sharing in the joys of God.

There will be in Heaven not only angels, who have been there for by now eons
already, or human spirits. By the last day of the cosmos, which may be
ten million centuries from now, there will also be a new earth.This
is revelation, not speculation. In a way we cannot begin to explain, the
present earth will be renewed, resurrected if you will. Why? Because we
are human beings of flesh and blood, and we are going to have flesh and
blood in heaven. No doubt the metabolism will be quite different, but
we will need objects of sense perception to enjoy with the bodies restored
to us. Heaven must be something besides empty space.

Heaven is Home. We are accustomed correctly to think of
heaven as our home because we are only pilgrims here on our way to the
home that Christ promised to prepare for us; we are only on a journey.
But heaven is, as John says, also to be the home of God. Faith tells us
that God is perfectly happy of and by Himself and would have been in perfect
beatitude even though He had created no creatures and no one else but
He existed. Nevertheless, insofar as humanly speaking we can say this;
heaven is why God created us. That is the object or the purpose of His
creating rational beings that we might find our perfect satisfaction in
possessing Him and also that He might accomplish His designs in us.

Surely we want, because we need, to possess Him. And we must also say He wants,
without needing, to possess us. That is a deep mystery, but the truth.
That is the goal of all the divine designs; the purpose of all divine
Providence. It is theambition God has, what He wants to achieve. So John
writes that in heaven His name will not only be God, but God-with-them.

There will be no more death or pain. Heaven means the cessation of all sorrow,
the end of all pain. It means thatwhatever has troubled us on earth will
trouble us no more. We shall no longer have to struggle and what is the
saddest part of struggling, never risk failing. We shall no longer wish
or desire and not obtain; unfulfilled longing is ultimately the source
of all pain. We shall no more have to endure the pains of the body or
the usually worse sufferings of soul that are so much a part of our life,
from our first cry at birth to our last spasm at death. All of this will
be no more.

The Vision of God. An absence of pain is not
all there is to heaven. Heaven is not the nirvana of Buddhism which means
an extinction, a final deliverance from multi-thousands of reincarnations.
Our faith it a great gift. We, contrary to hundreds of millions of our
fellow human beings, look forward to not just something, but Someone as
the goal of our existence.

So it is not only that there will not be any death or pain; a Buddhist looks
forward to that. But we believe that heaven means before all else and
for all eternity, the face to face vision of God. If this tends to leave
us somewhat cold, let us reflect that this vision means seeing into the
goodness and greatness and infinite beauty of God. It means elevating
our most ecstatic moments ten-thousand times in intensity, and extending
them beyond temporal duration everlastingly.

It also means multiplying all earthly joys of all human
beings and raising these joys immeasurably. It means enjoying God as far
as creatures can and as God enjoys Himself, which must be indescribable.
Look at all the pleasures and enjoyments of the human race since the beginning
of time; they are all as a drop of water compared to the ocean of God's
beatitude.

The Holy City. Heaven will be a society  in John's words, the
holy city, the new Jerusalem. This means that in heaven we shall know
our own families and there will be all sorts of newcomers whom we have
never met before. There will be relatives and friends, fellow religious
and students; those we have cared for and perhaps nursed; those we have
counseled and confided in. In a word, heaven is a community, where love
will unite everyone in the most affectionate harmony, where envy will
have ceased and our joy will be increased to see the joys of the others.

It is sometimes hard to enter into the joys of others, but in so doing our joy
is actually increased a thousand fold because we are so happy to see others
happy. In heaven we will share literally in their beatitude. As we gradually
master the tyrant of envy, we realize that not a small part of our not
being as happy as we might be in this life is because we do not sufficiently
enter into and share in the happiness of others. How do you explain that
we can actually be saddened to see someone happy, as though that person's
happiness somehow deprives us of what we should enjoy, when as a matter
of fact it is just the opposite?

Heaven is a community where jealousy will have disappeared. There is a difference
between envy and jealousy. Envy is sadness at what someone else has that
we don't have. Jealousy is the fear of losing something that we have,
so we don't want to share. Jealousy will also have disappeared in heaven,
and we will want to share what we have and will find increased joy in
giving. But heaven is not only something we are looking forward to; heaven
should be something that even now we have a foretaste of, meaning that
by the experience of overcoming our envy and jealousy, we shall learn
that even in this life we can be very, very happy  in the one case in
joining in the joys of others, in the other by giving and giving and giving.

Heaven is also a cluster of families, because we have in the nature of things
been involved in all manner of communitarian situations. In heaven, intimacy
will be shared. Thosewe have loved on earth will be loved with a generosity
not possible here, but also where many others will be found. There will
be persons whom we shall come to know and love, whose lives have spanned
the centuries: Abraham and David, Moses and Elijah, Mary and Joseph, the
apostles, the Evangelists, Saints Augustine and Aquinas, Teresa and Catherine
of Siena, the founders and foundresses of our respective communities and
the great luminaries who have followed our way of life.

John the Evangelist, who was surely a mystic, was also a realist. Or better,
Christ who revealed the Apocalypse bade him write this, in what are almost
the last words of the Bible: "Happy are those who will have washed
their robes clean, so that they will have a right to feed on the tree
of life and can come through the gates into the city. Jesus was revealing
heaven to John. Most people, I feel safe in saying, who reach heaven are
repentant sinners. We will have had to wash our robes clean. We must have
repented and the best repentance for the past is a new resolution for
a new future. The prize, in Christ's words, is a right; it is the right
to come through the gates into the city on high that awaits us, provided
that we, anticipating the glory, have been willing to carry the cross.